TASK-BASED APPROACH

Editor's Notes

• #4: “… some of the criteria are more important for judging whether an activity is a task than others. The key criterion is ( 2 ), the need for a primary focus on meaning. […] ‘a task stops being communicative only if the choice of activity has been prompted by purely linguistic considerations’. Also important are ( 3 ), ( 4 ) and ( 7 ). In contrast, ( 1 ), ( 5 ) and ( 6 ) would seem to apply to all teaching materials, including exercises.” (Ellis 2003, p 16) There are, for example, a lot of games-playing activities which do not relate precisely to the use of language outside the classroom. Our learners are not learning English so that they can play games outside the classroom. But in playing the game they are using lots of language and language skills which will be useful outside. The workplan takes the form of teaching materials or of ad hoc plans for activities that arise in the course of teaching. The task that the students perform may or may not match the teacher’s workplan. Cognitive processes selecting classifying ordering/sequencing reasoning - making connections - deducing - evaluating transforming information from one form of representation to another The non-linguistic outcome of the task serves as the goal of the activity for the learners.
• #6: In (( A ) the target structure is not necessary but expected to arise naturally and frequently in performing a task, or is not essential but very useful for completing the task ( activity 2: spot the difference – prepositions ). Learners cannot be expected to use a targeted structure unless they have already internalised it. If the task is to assist acquisition, it should be directed at a structure that learners are in the process of acquiring. The utility of a structure is relative to the learner’s existing stage of acquisition. Students who have already achieved full mastery of a specific structure will not benefit acquisitionally from producing the structure. This type of task serves the purpose of automatising existing knowledge . In ( B ) learners cannot avoid processing a specific feature which is frequent and / or salient in the oral or written input. Comprehension tasks are based on the assumption that acquisition occurs as a result of input-processing. In the case of unfocused comprehension tasks no attempt is made to structure the input to promote intake; thus learners can avoid processing syntactically by relying on semantic processing. In the case of focused comprehension , however, the input is contrived to induce noticing of predetermined forms; syntactic processing is required . Both ( A ) and ( B ) promote implicit learning - ‘noticing’; these types of tasks are language activating /fluency stretching. Any learning that does occur as a result of performing a structure-based task is likely to be incidental. A different kind of structure-based task is ‘dictogloss’. A text with a structural focus is read at normal speed, sentence by sentence, while learners note down key words and phrases. Learners working in groups try to reconstruct the text collaboratively. They are forced to consider the language they need to reconstruct the text carefully. ‘Dictogloss meets the essential requirements of a task (focus on meaning- learners can choose the linguistic resources – there’s a clear outcome: success is measured in terms of the propositional content rather than linguistic content). However, it is different from other structure-based tasks in that it results in very explicit attention to form of the kind that is characteristic of C-R tasks . In ( C ) learners are not required to use the feature , only to talk about or discuss it ; the ‘taskness’ of a C-R task lies not in the linguistic point that is the focus of the task but rather in the talk learners must engage in in order to achieve an outcome to the task. These tasks cater for discovery learning through problem solving -identification, judgement and sorting are operations involved in C-R ( activity 2, p. 18 ). They are intended to develop awareness at the level of understanding rather than awareness at the level of noticing. They promote knowledge construction / explicit knowledge .
• #7: When giving implicit feedback teachers are behaving as participants in the discourse ( focus on language ). Involves the strategic use of the ‘negotiation of meaning ’. Clarification requests contribute to the automatisation of existing knowledge . Recasts (which may or may not be seized on by the student) aid acquisition of new linguistic knowledge . ( examples in pp.71-72) Explicit feedback is a reaction to the accuracy of the form, not to the content of the message, i.e. explicit corrections of learner utterances. Plays a crucial role in enabling learners to make new form/meaning connections . For example if a targeted feature has not been used in a task, the pre-emptive focus may involve the teacher introducing the feature by means of a question or a metalingual comment about its meaning or form (example on page 171) An explicit correction may work best with ‘mistakes’ which do not interfere with communication rather than ‘errors’ (it is brief, does not involve metalingual comment and need not unduly disturb the primary focus on meaning). ( example on page 171) In order to ensure that learners do indeed process the feature that has been targeted a combination of careful design and planned implementation involving both implicit and explicit techniques, […] would seem ideal.
• #8: The goal can be specified in terms of what aspect(s) of communicative competence the task in intended to contribute to: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic (developing the four or specific aspects of communicative competence). Or it can be specified in terms of linguistic skills or the rhetorical mode (description, argument, directions, etc.) the task is intended to elicit. Input and conditions constitute two quite distinct task variables. Tasks may have the same input, for example, a set of pictures telling a story , but different conditions, for example, the pictures could be seen by all the participants or they could be divided up among them. Likewise, a task could have different input, for example, a set of pictures vs. a written story, but the same condition, for example, the information was split. These two features have both been found to have an effect on task performance. Procedures are independent of both the input and the conditions of the task. Tasks must have clear, specifiable product outcomes in order to qualify as tasks. In the case of process outcomes , i.e. what actually transpires when participants perform a task, it is much more difficult to make predictions as the language and cognitive behaviour elicited by a task are to a considerable extent dependent on the particular participants and cannot be reliably predicted. Nevertheless, predictions can be made.